The creation of cultural policy in the media: a field research of cultural discourses in Germany

In Germany, cultural policy is formally made on the level of municipalities, the Länder (federal states) and the federal government. With approximately eight billion Euros per year, they finance a large percentage of cultural and arts activities: music, theater, dance, museums, libraries, film and the preservation of sites of historic interest. The federal government sets the legal framework in which art can be produced and distributed, and finances it indirectly through tax reductions (VAT reduction), copy right laws, and special health insurance and retirement arrangements for artists (Künstlersozialkasse). Within this institutionalized legal and governmental setting, the discursive dimension of politics is often forgotten, particularly when policy creation is being discussed. This article focuses on the discursive dimensions of politics within the field of classical and contemporary music and offers a discourse analysis of mass media coverage to investigate policy‐making.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.     

Wilderness,Nature and Society: contributions to the history of an environmental attitude

The depth of feeling now seen in the struggle over environmental conservation can, with the aid of scholars in other disciplines, be traced to the central importance of Nature in the ideology of Western Society. The late seventeenth century is seen as the period of an ideological transformation in which Nature, at first under the tutelage of God, came to set the terms for social definition and debate. As a flexible metaconcept, Nature became a weapon of social control for a hegemonic centre and, at the same time, a vehicle of protest for the social periphery. Further ambiguity arises from the intersection of this development with the devaluation of Nature as a commodity within the capitalist system, which intensifies the element of protest in the use of Nature as a social category.     

Fields of gold: reflections on the research relations of the cultural policy researcher

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the methodological implications of the relations we have to our object of study as cultural policy researchers. We ask: What research relations we typically are part of and what social dimensions structure these relations? These questions are discussed by comparing field experiences from two cultural forms that can be characterized as polar opposites when it comes to the degree to which they are legitimized: contemporary opera and dance bands. We suggest that four dimensions are especially relevant to help ‘unpack’ the relations we typically find ourselves in as cultural policy researchers; cultural hierarchy, research conditions, geography and, gender and age. The coexistence of these dimensions means that the cultural policy researcher regularly finds him/herself in complex situations that we suggest should be analysed in terms of the ways in which, and the extent to which, we develop roles as insiders – or outsiders – in the field     

蒋百里对中国抗战的理论探索与贡献

蒋百里很早就把日本视作中国国防的首要敌人,预料日本会发动大规模的侵华战争,拟出持久抵抗、攻守结合的国防战略,并从军事布置、物质准备、工业布局和实施国家总动员等方面,积极筹划抵御日本侵略的国防建设.他的"机动作战"论和组建大规模机械化部队开展运动战抗击日军的建议,为中国抗战军事理论做出了一定的贡献.他的"抗战必胜"论,更激励了士心民气,坚定了全国军民抗战到底的决心,为抗日战争的最后胜利奠下一份心理基础.     

Borders,planning and policy transfer: historical transformation of development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley

European Union spatial policies have become a key institutional context in which to study policy transfer processes in European border areas. These policies are, however, only the most recent part of these transformation processes which raises a need for more historically sensitive approaches. An historical perspective is important, since border regions are historical processes with particular path-dependent development trajectories and power structures. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the transformation of European border regions by looking at the policy transfer of regional development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley. The study material consists of strategic development documents produced by the Finnish border municipalities and the municipal-based co-operation organizations from the 1930s to 2013. The examination, based on critical discourse analysis, shows that the transformation process is driven by national trends and the dominant planning discourse. Nevertheless, the particular border setting and local discourse on ‘united Torne Valley’ have also intertwined with political and economic processes during different time periods.     

Language,history and the nation: an historical approach to evaluating language and cultural claims

ABSTRACT. In contrast to the abstract commitment to individual rights found in liberal critics of Bill 101 and the equally ahistorical approach of multicultural theorists like Bhikhu Parekh, this paper proposes that the particular historical circumstances surrounding the current minority status of different groups is crucial in evaluating the legitimacy of one cultural group to promote its cultural needs over another group within existing states. When the culture of a group residing within a particular state is secure in a neighbouring jurisdiction, the issue at stake is not necessarily the survival of a unique culture but the cultural needs of particular individuals. It does not follow that they have no legitimate claims against the state. However, in examining the language policies in Quebec and the newly independent Baltic states, it is argued that they are different in kind to the rights due to long‐standing communities struggling for linguistic survival.     

1840-1860年间清政府三种外交体系分析

两次鸦片战争期间的中外关系,如果按照类型分析法标准来划分,可以基本分为朝贡体系Ⅰ型、Ⅱ型和Ⅲ型三类。中国与三类国家间的关系及其各自体制内部的演变错综复杂。两次鸦片战争之间的中外关系显然发生了重要变化。澄清这一时期中外关系复杂的性质,对中国近代史研究具有重要意义。     

A short history of Mulabbis (Petah Tikva,Israel)

The following article summarizes our current knowledge of the history of Tell Mulabbis (in modern Petah Tikva). As a key archaeological site in the Yarkon River basin, it was inhabited during the Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Late Ottoman periods. Based on the published results of recent excavations, older scholarship, and hereto-unnoticed written evidence, the article examines and interprets Mulabbis's material culture within the broader contexts of the region's historical geography. Although possessing important advantages like access to water and arable land, the site was inhabited only intermittently due to malaria and changing economic and political circumstances. Within the framework of Ottoman Archaeology, the article suggests the need to pay closer attention to ‘recent’ archaeological layers. For example, the few Ottoman material remains published so far, testify to continued cultural exchange and economic ties between Mulabbis, the mountainous interior, and the southern parts of Palestine.     

Creating the cultures of the future: cultural strategy,policy and institutions in Gramsci

Gramsci’s writings have rarely been discussed and used systematically by scholars in cultural policy studies, despite the fact that in cultural studies, from which the field emerged, Gramsci had been a major source of theoretical concepts. Cultural policy studies were, in fact, theorised as an anti-Gramscian project between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when a group of scholars based in Australia advocated a major political and theoretical reorientation of cultural studies away from hegemony theory and radical politicisation, and towards reformist–technocratic engagement with the policy concerns of contemporary government and business. Their criticism of the ‘Gramscian tradition’ as inadequate for the study of cultural policy and institutions has remained largely unexamined in any detail for almost 20 years and seems to have had a significant role in the subsequent neglect of Gramsci’s contribution in this area of study. This essay, consisting of three parts, is an attempt to challenge such criticism and provide an analysis of Gramsci’s writings, with the aim of proposing a more systematic contribution of Gramsci’s work to the theoretical development of cultural policy studies. In Part I, I question the use of the notion of ‘Gramscian tradition’ made by its critics, and challenge the claim that it was inadequate for the study of cultural policy and institutions. In Parts II and III, I consider Gramsci’s specific writings on questions of cultural strategy, policy and institutions, which have so far been overlooked by scholars, arguing that they provide further analytical insights to those offered by his more general concepts. More specifically, in Part II, I consider Gramsci’s pre-prison writings and political practice in relation to questions of cultural strategy and institutions. I argue that the analysis of these early texts, which were written in the years in which Gramsci was active in party organisation and leadership, is fundamental not only for understanding the nature of Gramsci’s early and continued involvement with questions of cultural strategy and institutions, but also as a key for deciphering and interpreting cultural policy themes that he later developed in the prison notebooks, and which originated in earlier debates. Finally, in Part III, I carry out a detailed analysis of Gramsci’s prison notes on questions of cultural strategy, policy and institutions, which enrich the theoretical underpinnings for critical frameworks of analysis as well as for radical practices of cultural strategy, cultural policy-making and cultural organisation. I then answer the question of whether Gramsci’s insights amount to a theory of cultural policy.     

Ready, willing, and able to divorce: an economic and cultural history of divorce in twentieth-century Sweden

This study outlines a long history of divorce in Sweden, recognizing the importance of considering both economic and cultural factors in the analysis of marital dissolution. Following Ansley Coale, the authors examine how a framework of multiple theoretical constructs, in interaction, can be applied to the development toward mass divorce. Applying a long historical perspective, the authors argue that an analysis of gendered aspects of the interaction between culture and economics is crucial for the understanding of the rise of mass divorce. The empirical analysis finds support for a marked decrease in legal and cultural obstacles to divorce already during the first decades of the twentieth century. However, economic structures remained a severe obstacle that prohibited significant increases in divorce rate prior to World War II. It was only during the 1940s and 1960s, when cultural change was complemented by marked decreases in economic interdependence between spouses, that the divorce rate exhibited significant increases. The authors find that there are advantages to looking at the development of divorce as a history in which multiple empirical factors are examined in conjunction, recognizing that these factors played different roles during different time periods.     

Kathleen Ritzpatrick (1905-1990), Margaret Kiddle (1914-1958) and Australian history after the Second World War

This article explores the pioneering efforts of two Australian historians, Margaret Kiddle and Kathleen Fitzpatrick, to place issues of women and gender centrally in a narrative of Australia's past. While they were not the first women to enter the history profession in Australia, both women made a significant mark on the Australian history profession in the years after World War II. Furthermore, their first books represent the earliest scholarly Australian works in which women appeared as central figures. Their achievement was initially overlooked by feminists of the 1970s, but in retrospect can be viewed as a first step in subverting the dominant masculinity of Australian national identity.